thesis

Contemporary social critics have often asserted that technology has allowed for the deployment of panoptic structures invisibly throughout society.

The growth of panoptic monitoring technologies begins to infringe upon our privacy. However, one could argue that these technologies don't always favor the hierarchical structure outlined by Bentham and Foucault, but can also enable individuals through inverse surveillance, or sousveillance, to appropriate technological tools for individual or public purposes. On the other hand, one could say that society is leading into a balanced state of a universal "participatory panopticon" in which there is an equivalence or equilibrium of monitoring and control structures between parties.

Following my fascination and repulsion for the technologies of surveillance, as well as the technologies of transparency, visibility, and their implications, I am interested in observation, in new ways of viewing, and how the activity of viewing changes our perceptions of space, as well as our position in it. I want to explore how these technologies define spaces, how our own perceptions can mediate the formation of new relationships between spaces, how the act of seeing and being seen can define spaces, and finally how this can influence how we “remember” and how we navigate these spaces.